“I’m a new affiliate and I’m wondering what’s the best website platform I should use?

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about using Microsoft Front Page to create a HTML site. While others have mentioned blogs.

What do you suggest?”

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My Answer:

There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing your marketing platform, and there’s no “best” platform.

It’s very situational in nature.

If you’re starting out, creating a HTML site might be easier.

I started out using Microsoft Front Page (which has since been replaced by Microsoft Web Expressions). It is alright for single page affiliate sites.

However, with Google’s stricter implementation of Quality Score and having to insert secondary pages like an about us, privacy policy, contact us page, sitemap, etc, using Front Page can be quite cumbersome.

I’ve been using XSitePro quite a bit recently. It’s a pretty intelligent website builder and lets you create sections and sub-sections pretty easily. Best of all, it links your pages seamlessly, creates a site map for you and automates your HTML creation.

I’ve created content sites with about 60 pages of content within 2 hours before, mainly because you can create pages in bulk.

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If you’re more advanced, you might like to look at using WordPress as your marketing platform. Super Affiliate Ros Gardner mentioned that WordPress is a key element in her marketing strategy and you can take a look at the Dating blog attached to her Sage-Hearts dating site.

Another Super Affiliate, Kim Rowley, who’s been featured in the September/October issue of Revenue, has mentioned that the bulk of her sites are on the WordPress platform. You can take a look at her Key Internet Marketing portfolio of sites.

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Blogs are great because they get indexed quickly by the search engines, especially if the content is frequently updated.

One thing I don’t like about blogs is that the information is presented in a chronological manner (like a diary), rather than in a categorical manner (like how information is sorted).

So the solution is to point your blog, or direct blog traffic to a content site.

While you can use Joomla as a content management system, especially since it’s got categories down pat, do note that it’s essentially a PHP script, so if you have a heavy trafficked WordPress blog and a Joomla site (both of them use PHP) you will put a strain on your hosting resources, especially if you’re using anything less than a VPS or dedicated server.

Right now, my preference is to go with a HTML site (created and more importantly, managed with XSitePro) and WordPress as a traffic generator.

–
That’s an interesting question and let me do my best to you an interesting answer.

If you read Stephanie Agresta (AKA Internet Geek Girl’s) post “Blogging is not dead (but I am really busy)“, you’d realize that like a lot of popular bloggers (eg. Sam Harrelson, Wayne Porter, Jim Kukral and Co), Steph has reduced the frequency of her “long form” (eg. WordPress blogging), in favor of micro-blogging (eg. Twitter and it’s companions).

So blogging is not “dying” nor will it “die” anytime soon.

The significant issue at hand is to get a grip on your long term business growth.

Are you being overly tactical – looking at the micro level of your business – whether you should set up a squidoo page, a hubpage, a facebook profile, throw up a social community site…

When really you need to be more strategic in nature!

If you need an analogy – strategic or being long term-focused means looking at the forest, and fashioning a master plan.

Being tactical means you’re looking at an individual tree and trying to optimize it. Taking care of the day-to-day. so to speak.

Don’t get me wrong, you NEED to be tactical in nature when you’re going into a new niche and building up your skills, but you shouldn’t be spending your time digging up all the coolest and newest Facebook applications or WordPress plugins at the expense of your business growth.

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If you are serious about bringing your business to the next level, you might instead be looking at:

• Synergistic partnerships to expand the breadth and reach of your products and services.
• Opening new channels and distribution, opening new markets for your existing products.
• Trend forecasting and research and development, to expand the capabilties of your current, to evolve it into a version 2.0 or version 3.0 so you can meet the future head on.

And only once you’ve laid out the blueprints to meet those challenges listed above, yeah, sure, you can fire up the Battleships application on Facebook and start fragging those tactical-thinking marketers into kingdom come…

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My Answer:
There’s a lot of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) being spread, especially by marketers who aren’t using paid traffic, typically certain members of the Web 2.0 fraternity.

Yes, you can lose lots of money, and not generate a single sale, but only if you don’t have a plan in mind. I was in that category before, bidding on low competition keywords, having subscribed to the “long tail keyword” strategy.

The fact is that with quality score playing a dominant role in Google AdWords, you will need to bid reasonable prices to get the conversions.

I have a stock portfolio which generates 10-20% on an annualized basis. If you’ve refined your PPC campaigns and are able to generate at least 50% on a monthly basis, you’ve outperformed most of the mutual funds and equity funds in the market.

So let’s look at some PPC newbie pitfalls:

• Not enough keywords in your adwords campaign

If you’ve only 20-200 keyphrases in your campaign, it might only generate a handful of clickthroughs and even fewer sales per day.

Reasonably you should have at least 1,000 keywords in your campaign to see good results.

• Poor choice of keywords

It’s not just enough to choose cheap or low competition keywords, you need to have an idea of the type of keywords your intended clicker will be typing, regardless of whether you expect them to complete a CPA offer or buy an affiliate product.

Bad match? A key indicator is if you’re getting good clickthroughs and poor conversions. While it’s easy to blame it on a poor landing page, the more fundamental issue is your keyword list.

• Insufficient ad budget

While it’s ambitious to want to generate great results from your PPC campaign, it’s going to be difficult to do that with a $5-10 daily budget. A budget should be the result of working backwards from your outcome/result.

You also need to understand your market. If you’re planning to do an ultra competitive area like webhosting, you might do better with a $100-200 daily budget given the high commission payouts and even greater competition in that niche.

• The “Fire and forget” mentality

Successful PPC marketers will tell you that keyword research, setting up the campaign and launching it is only 10% of the battle. The rest lies in being able to effectively optimize your campaign.

Optimize in this case, goes way beyond merely making changes to your bid prices.

The optimization process is a reflection of your optimization strategy – you need to know whether you need to increase your traffic, improve the quality of your traffic, or adopt a different strategy.

Google already provides a powerful suite of tools and analytics package. If you fail to use them, you do so at your own peril.

As you evolve your PPC strategies, you’ll see that PPC is systematic in nature and there’s “more than meets the eye”.

“I’m a new Internet Marketer and like you, I plan to focus on blogging and affiliate marketing. I make about $500 a month now.

What’s the best way of doing this? I want to be the next Darren Rowse! I’m planning to quit my job by the end of the year after getting my bonus if this gig works out for me…”

My answer:

It’s great to hear you’re taking action on your goals, Ken, especially as you’ve found that the Internet lifestyle gives you more options.

I don’t think newer Internet Marketers can successfully master two areas, unless you’re very disciplined. You probably should focus on one area.

Between blogging and affiliate marketing, although the two fields are related, I’d recommend you focus on affiliate marketing as that activity directly generates income. With blogging, income tends to be a secondary focus (unless you’re highly skilled at monetizing your blog).

I’m more concerned with the fact that you’re generating $500 from your Internet Marketing efforts now.

Have you calculated your monthly expenditure?

It could be in the range of $2,000 (if you’re single and living in a small community) to more than $5,000 a month.

So you might want to hold on to your “Quit your day job” ambition till your income stabilizes to a level you’re comfortable with before taking the big plunge.

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Every Monday I answer readers questions in the “Monday Question” series. If you’ve a question, you can send it in via the contact form.

Note: Due to the volume of emails we receive, we may not be able to answer every question.

Reader Rick is developing content for an iPod/iPhone niche site and asks for assistance in creating content for his site, specifically “Where am I going to get relevant content that is of such a nature that Ipod fans would feel it was worth reading about and that they couldn’t just go to Apple’s site themselves to read”

It will seem challenging to create content when tackling a new niche, but I see it as an opportunity to learn something new.

As information marketers, we’ll need to continually be receptive to picking up new skills and expanding our repertoire of marketing knowledge.

The surest sign that there’s a ready market for any type of product is to check out if there’s a “For Dummies” guide available.

Spend a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon in a Borders or Barnes and Nobles and you’ll see that these Dummies guides fly off the shelves. Don’t let the name fool you either because some of the top minds write these books. Dr Ruth authored the “Sex for Dummies” book and sales guru Tom Hopkins wrote a sales-related Dummies title.

Note that although the Dummies guide started out as a help for PC computer “dummies”, it’s since expanded to include “Wine for Dummies”

If you need inspiration (or to do a little research), visit the Dummies website.

So after hitting the main page, where you see that the label has diversified into a myriad of areas including:

• At Home
• Health, Mind and Spirit
• Making and Manging Money
• Travel
• Sports and Leisure

Proof that the iPhone is a hot area? It has it’s own page:

Besides the iPhone, we can see that hot topics include:

• “iPod”
• “iTunes”
• “Mac TV”
• “OS X Leopard”

So now you know that there’s hot demand (and you might be tempted to start a “crochet pattern” and “sudoku” niche site…), how do you create content?

At its core, content is an answer to a question.

Content is just the name given to the solution to a problem.

If you’ve done your research, putting the content together is pretty easy.

Off the top of my head, I’d think the questions for iPhone buyers might be:

• How long should I charge my iPhone for? Would it be better to undercharge or overcharge my unit
• How tough is the LCD screen? How long will it last for? How do I take care of it?
• What can I do at iTunes? What can I buy? Can I get a discount or coupon code? Can I buy music and videos from other sites?
• How do I backup the data on my iPhone?
• Besides the regular functions, are there other “undocumented” features that the iPhone comes with?

Although you might find some of these answers on the official Apple site, it’s likely that most of them aren’t answered, that’s where the content comes in.

On hindsight, it might’ve seemed smart to have developed my Rabid Niche Cash Machine product, but at that time, the iPhone books hadn’t been released yet. It has to do with keeping in touch with news and trends through newspapers, magazines, blogs and forums to get an idea of what’s hot and what’s going to be the next rabid niche.

At its heart, great content answers questions, and might open up a few more questions (and your visitors will come back to check it out, leading to ‘sticky’ content)

Creating Content

Now that you have the questions and the answers, how do you put your content together?

One way is to list the best answer to the question in bullet points. You can outline the steps involved, or a series of comparisons (pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages). When you put the answers together it will add up to quite a substantial mass of information.

Just imagine you’re explaining the process of swapping out your iPhone battery to your grandma. Surely you can’t just tell her to pop the lid and prise out the old battery with your fingernail…

[Using this as a hypothentical example] You might need to backup your data onto your computer, shut down the system in a certain safe mode, find a paper clip to wedge it in a special notch and twist it counterclockwise, before lifting the lid from the bottom side first, etc…

Just because I am familiar with gadgets and have taken apart more of the electronic equipment I own doesn’t mean I’m familiar with everything, I just might need to buy that Dummies guide for my next Tivo with biometric features…

I am willing to learn, I have bought a number of ebooks, and have made a few affiliate sales (about $50-100 worth of commissions each month), but at this rate, I doubt I’ll be able to quit my day job and live on my online income anytime soon. What do you suggest I buy next and how much do I have to spend before I make a full time online income? Thanks!

Here’s a list of what I bought:

[A list of about 5 ebooks follow. I’m guess she’s spent about $300 on them]

Patty

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My Answer:

It’s encouraging to see new Internet marketers take responsibility for their actions and I think the fact that you’re generating sales from your website each month shows that you’re taking consistent effort.

To make the gap between generating “hobby money” (I define this as less than $2,000 a month in online income) and a living based on your online businesses means that you need a couple of ingredients:

• A Game Plan

Have you defined what income level you’re aiming for? ($1,000? $10,000? $100,000 per month?). More importantly, have you listed the amount of time and resources you’re willing to put into this?

Most new marketers write down a $20,000 a month goal when they start out, and they put in barely 2 hours a week into their business. There’s a serious effort-reward gap in the equation…

An online business still follows the effort -> result equation. You don’t just need to dream big, you need to put in the sweat equity at least in the early stages.

• Focus and Consistency

Do your research before you begin. What niche are you going to focus on? Is it a niche market? Is the demand sufficient to sustain your revenue (and profit?)?

Is it a competitive market? Can you compete effectively?

What’re your monetization strategies? A goal of 100 Adsense clicks a day might be a good start, but are they only paying $0.10 a click? Are there affiliate programs available? Would you create your own product?

Once your research has concluded and you’ve decided on your business model, you need to be focused and consistent in your efforts. There was an Internet marketer who built their blog up to about 500 visitors a day, she left for a 6 week vacation and the visitors dropped to about 5 a day when she returned. It took another couple of months to build it up to her pre-vacation traffic level.

• Go Beyond Costs, Focus On Results

Here’s one takeaway from my buddy, Amit Mehta’s post “What’s Your Investment Plan?“, you need to figure out what your expect return or result is from any investment you make…

It’s not just a cost issue, you need to take stock of the whole picture.

Here’s the analogy: Cost -> Investment+Effort -> Return/Profit

So if you incur a cost, you need to couple that with an investment (in the form of taking action).

You also need a clear idea of the profit you’re planning to generate.

It’s not enough just to set goals, you need to work towards them to get the results you desire.

I spend about $10,000 – $12,000 in new products and services each year, as part of my “education”.

Some of it is Internet Marketing related, some of it is marketing or business strategy related, and some of it is far outside of the business arena, focused on expanding my circle of contacts and network.

My expectation is that I’m able to generate at least 10 times what I’ve invested not just in financial terms, but in time too.

Developing your mind will bring you the biggest leverage in your business and investing in real world experience (in the form of testing new marketing campaigns) has given the biggest return for the time+money I’ve spent on them.

–

If you’re a newer marketer, the Rabid Niche Cash Machine system I developed could help you on your way.

If you’re an experienced marketer, the Super Affiliate Accelerator which Amit and I have developed could bring your campaigns to a new level.

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The Monday Question is a weekly series where I answer reader questions. You can submit your questions via the contact form. Due to the volume of emails we receive, we will not be able to individually answer each question.

While I can’t show the blog or do a screencapture due to confidentiality reasons, here are some points to help you bring your blog monetization to the next level.

Nothing beats a well-tuned blog. This means tracking your analytics and conversions, and making the improvements and tracking, and repeating the cycle.

Broadly, you need to understand the intention and outcome of every visitor to your blog.

Are they there to browse? To make a comparison? To make a purchase?

I’ve found that AdSense publishing is suited for browsers who are still looking for information and aren’t close to making a buying decision yet.

I’ve found AdSense to provide a fairly low ROI (return on investment), so I’ve focused on my affiliate marketing efforts.

You can’t have it both ways…

It’s unlikely that a visitor will both click on an adsense ad AND buy a product from you – It’s either one or the other.

I’ve heard pseudo blogging “experts” say that you should have both adsense and affiliate offers on your blog, because someone who doesn’t buy, will click on your adsense ads instead.

THIS IS COMPLETE NONSENSE.

If you follow such ill-founded advice, you could possibly wreck your blog income efforts.

Let’s look at this situation logically:

• If your traffic profile comprises browsers – They’re not likely to buy, just run adsense ads.
• If your traffic profile comprises buyers – Clicking on an adsense ad means they will head off your blog and you’d lose the sale.

So the bottomline is that you need to choose either to cater to buyers or browsers.

You can convert browsers to buyers if you have compelling content that pre-sells your offers, or if you have established a solid reputation in the marketplace.

More importantly, you need to clearly understand the outcome you want to achieve and have confidence in your ability to achieve it.

If you have strong content creation and selling/marketing skills, I’d suggest you run only affiliate offers on your blog.

Adopt an all-or-nothing effort when it comes to monetizing your traffic and you’ll drive yourself harder to achieve results, and your sales will speak for themselves.

“I see several options to run web advertising on my websites, and it looks very easy compared to affiliate marketing. Wouldn’t it be easier to make money this way?”

–

That’s a good question.

Your internet income is determined by your effort.

The level of engagement (the time and effort you put into your marketing efforts) generally determines the type of return you get.

Here’s a listing of different monetization techniques with payouts listed from lower returns to higher returns:

Web advertising -> CPA (cost per action) marketing -> pay per sale (or what’s traditionally known as affiliate marketing) -> product creation

Web advertising refers to programs like the Google AdSense publisher program, Yahoo Search Marketing ads, WidgetBucks or programs like Chitika and Kontera.

I’ve found that web advertising generally provides a low rate of return UNLESS you pick a very hot niche, for example Transformers (during the launch of the movie), or perhaps a Batman-themed site in conjunction with the next movie. A “Gears of Wars” niche site for the XBox360 game wouldn’t do too shabbily either.

You’d probably know that all it takes to get paid is to have your visitors click on the ads.

Your payouts generally range from $0.05 per click and can go up to about $10 per click.

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CPA Marketing provides a higher payout, however, the level of engagement is higher too.

In many cases the “Action” element in “Cost Per Action” involves submitting their name and email address, or requesting for information, or paying a nominal fee for a product.

Beyond just being a publisher, you need to have some marketing knowledge to create an incentive for visitors to complete the offer. More importantly, you need to know how to select offers that will convert.

Payouts generally range from $0.50 per action and can go up to $100 per lead.

There’s several affiliate networks you can join to check out CPA offers. I’ll update my resources page with a number of them.

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Affiliate marketing requires active marketing on your part because you’re paid a commission only when the prospect buys the product or service. It’s also known as performance-based marketing.

With physical products (like a TV or computer or furniture), the commission generally ranges between 2% and 15% of the product price.

With digital products (eg. ebooks, podcasts, certain types of DVDs, home study courses), it can range between 50% to 75%. In some cases, the payout can hit 100%.

–

With product creation, you’d invest a one-time effort to develop the product, then decide how you want to market it. You could either market it yourself and keep all the profits, or recruit affiliate marketers to promote it, or run a PPC campaign and recruit publishers to run your advertising.

Beyond just “creating a product”, the key skills needed include being able to conduct market research, assessing product demand, managing product development, planning your marketing strategy, setting up your order fulfilment infrastructure, executing the campaign and customer service. If you’re a newer marketer, you might want to gain experience as an affiliate before trying this.

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Your first assumption might be that everyone should be an affiliate marketer for digital products.

It can be immensely successful provided you’re willing to invest time to understand your market and create the appropriate marketing campaign.

Most newbies will create a blog or website, do a product review along the lines of “Is Product XYZ a scam? Read this review to find out” then drop their affiliate link in there.

There’s many problems with this approach [which I might go into in a later post] that it will not work for many newbies.

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The bottomline is that if you’re totally green to Internet Marketing, you might want to start off with web advertising, and gradually move up to CPA marketing and affiliate marketing.

If you’ve already had some experience under your belt, you might like to check out my Wealth Ninja affiliate marketing product, or Anik Singal and Jeremy Palmer’s PPC Classroom.

Here’s my response to this Monday Question:



Monday Question - PPC Vs Blogging And Free Traffic - The best bloopers are a click away


While blogging and free traffic continue to generate 90-95% of the traffic (with SEO traffic making up the balance), like any business owner, I’m looking at ways to grow my business and increase sales and profits.

PPC is certainly a good prospect, which is why I’m promoting PPC Classroom. It comes from 2 credible Internet marketers, Jeremy Palmer and Anik Singal, and I’ve had a chance to take a look at the product. The next phase is putting it into action.

That’s one of the reasons I’m joining together with PPC Super Affiliate Amit Mehta to work on a number of PPC projects.

Besides PPC, I’ve been exploring eBay as a source of traffic and monetization, as well as a SEO project with former blackhat SEO-turned-Web2.0 specialist Howie Schwartz. More on that later this week.

“I’m a ebay powerseller and getting into the niche marketing vibe.

Judging by the number of high dollar earnings screenshots I’m seeing, I’m planning to go into the internet marketing niche.

I worked hard to build my ebay business and am sure I can replicate the same in internet marketing.

Can you give me any suggestions?”

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My answer:

That’s the great thing about Internet Marketing, the ability to continually expand your focus and the ebay stats screenshots you sent me were pretty impressive too.

You might like to check out Super Affiliate Amit Mehta’s post “Selecting a niche is everything in affiliate marketing”

As an affiliate or a product creator, the biggest constraint you will face is time.

Like it or not, even outsourcing the bulk of your projects, you’ll need to closely monitor your ROI (return on investment) of your time which is limited to 24 hours a day.

This is what I mean:

If you’re working 12 hours day intially to build your business, you could be bringing in $20,000 – $50,000 a month as an affiliate marketer (leveraging on your previous experience as an eBay powerseller). Assuming you’re looking at a conservative 50% margin, that’s a $10,000 to $25,000 net profit off the bat.

Your hourly ROI is about $33.33 per hour (assuming the $10,000 is earned in 25 days a month, 12 hours a day) . At $25,000, your ROI works ou to about $83.88.
That’s the scenario for the “Internet Marketing niche”.

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Now imagine you go into something with equally good potential, but with fewer competitiors (most new internet marketers inevitably choose the internet marketing or make money online niches…). A niche software product that most home users will benefit from – say a disk defragmentation software, an anti-virus software, or personal tax software.

[This is a theoretical scenario, so don’t take the numbers are concrete ones]

For the same 25 days a month, 12 hours a day, your profit could be $50,000 to $75,000 a month.

This could be due to fewer competitiors in your market, a higher degree of domain knowledge which keeps out “newbies” to this market, and lower marketing costs (eg. PPC bids costing much less than $5-10 a click found in ultra competitive niches).

What’s happened here?

For the same effort (time and resources), you’ve seen a quantum increase in your ROI (a minimum of 250%), so it has everything to do with profiling a niche and focusing on it.

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If anything when it comes to niches, the ones nobody talks about are the ones that will have the greatest market potential.

A little research before heading into any niche can help you best direct your resources.

“Hi Andrew,

I’ve a new site and getting traffic seems to be a challenge.

I have been thinking of link exchanges. I’m hearing different things about them. Do they work?

-Dylan”

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In my opinion many marketers are overly obsessed with traffic.

Traffic won’t solve your worries if your site has a ‘leaky’ design (with multiple exit links for visitors), doesn’t have effective channels for monetization or list building, or doesn’t have sticky content to get visitors to keep coming back. For the purposes of discussion, I’ll assume that you got those areas covered, or are working on them.

Besides raw traffic quantity (number of visitors), you need to monitor and closely refine your traffic quality (how relevant your visitors are). There’s no point to get everyone and his mother over to your site if they don’t fit your site’s demographic.

That’s where alliances are handy.

A link exchange is where two websites or blogs have a link to the other site listed somewhere. The idea is that visitors from one site will flow through to the other.

If you partner with a relevant site and cross refer traffic to each other, you’d both benefit from the exchange.

But here’s where it breaks down.

Are you doing a link exchange for a boost in your Google PageRank or for traffic?

If you’re doing the link exchange for PageRank, do note that most link exchange partners will list your link on a ‘Links’ page. And PageRank is page specific. So even if their domain has a PageRank of 6, the “Links.html” page you’re linked from might have a PR0 or PR1. If you’re linking to them from a PR5 or PR6 page on your site, you’re getting the short end of the stick…

Even if their “links” page has a high PR value, if you see 100 other links on that page, how’s anyone supposed to find your site in that mess and come to your site?

—

If you’re doing the link exchange for traffic, take a look at their site metrics.

Flawed though the Alexa page count might be, if your Alexa ranking is 100,000 and theirs is 6,093,384, there’s an unequal exchange in the link exchange.

—

I’ve done a number of link exchanges, but they’ve been with close friends or strategic business partners. Even if their stats aren’t as strong now, I’m in it for the long haul.

For example, this is an excerpt from my awstats analytics screen:

As a contributor to the MyBlogLog blog, I get a fair amount of reciprocal traffic and a number of blog readers come to the blog based on entries appearing in their feed reader (bloglines, google reader). And flow through traffic from my buddies Amit Mehta (SuperAffiliateMindset) and Eli (BlueHatSEO)

Eli gets consistent traffic from the blackhat/bluehat SEO crowd and has had a burst of traffic after making it to the top 50 listing of bloggers:

Besides awstats which should come with your web hosting account, another useful tracking tool is the MyBlogLog Pro Stats:

Again a fair amount of traffic from my listing in Mark’s (45n5.com) top 100 blogs.

And some of the other traffic from Ruck’s CashTactics.net came solely from blog commenting.

The other point is that getting your content syndicated on sites like WebProNews, MyBlogLog, BumpZee, IM Newswatch can bring you floods of traffic if you’re not particularly motivated to mail 100 sites trying to do a link exchange.

Content contribution to generate traffic has a couple of points going for it:

• It’s interactive and you’re ‘talking’ to the website/blog owner
• It’s fun
• People who like your content and make the effort to come over, prequalify themselves – they’re more likely to like what you have to say

If you’re determined to do the link exchange thang, check out Derek Beau’s link exchange writeup.

The bottomline for me: I’d stay away from link exchanges with people you hardly know. You’d probably do better with PPC traffic. If it’s a friend or associate, I’m more inclined to consider them more seriously, even then I probably do about 1 out of every 20-30 proposals I get.

While you might be suffering initially from a traffic slump, I’d suggest that building your brand with a long term focus will help you build a solid online business.

“Like you, I’m a writer by training and since become a SAHM (stay at home mum), I’ve mastered the basics of blogging and writing articles and am starting to get into simple product creation.

Some of this other stuff like SEO is beyond me. I bought a couple of dummies books and know some basic HTML and can do a simple page. But the PHP and MySQL programming stuff is way beyond me. Help! I am feeling overwhelmed and although I’m doing ok now, I can’t help feeling that I won’t be able to master it all.

Please advise what I can do about this.”

—

My Answer:

It’s great that you’ve taken the step of taking the plunge into Internet Marketing.

Like you, I’ve pretty inept when it comes to programming stuff too. Aside from being able to generate content (blogging, articles, forums and information products) and network and generate traffic, I don’t wander into programming too much.

Here’s what I’ve learned from some of the experienced guys I talk to:

Internet Marketing is counter intuitive to what you learn in school:

In school, you need to master math and science and the liberal arts, on top of that you have foreign languages and maybe have to pick up a musical instrument or art too.

So what happens is that you become a jack-of-all-trades and just about average or maybe above-average or below-average in each area.

In the world of business, it’s completely different. You need to focus on your strengths. Most marketers will have just one strength. If you’re lucky, you might be strong in two areas. I haven’t met a marketer who’s great at:

• SEO
• Traffic Generation
• Testing and tracking
• PPC
• Social traffic generation
• Product Creation
• Email marketing
• Blogging
• eBay auctions
• Product launches
• Affiliate Marketing
• Affiliate Management
• Podcasting/Vlogging
• Press Releases
• Media Buys
• Programming/application development
• Web/graphics design
• Forum management

Instead, what you should do is focus on your strengths.

If I need help in an area where I lack expertise, I’ll use the following criteria:

If it’s a minor project, I’d outsource the project to a freelancer or team through my network of contacts. If you don’t know enough people, you can ask a friend for a recommendation or look for someone on the forums. As a last resort, I’d go to sites like elance or rentacoder as you’d have to spend some time filtering the talent.

If it’s a major project, I’d be more inclined to get a personal referral to someone experienced. Alternatively I’d look for a partner, especially if it’s likely to turn into a longterm business.

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Regardless of your area of expertise, I’m sure that you’d be able to generate a comfortable $3,000 to $5,000 a month from your efforts and if you budget it correctly, you should be able to pay for improvements to your products and services or blog/forum/website (which would pay for themselves within days or a few months).

The major motivation killer for Internet Marketers is the feeling that they’re overwhelmed by the feeling that they need to “know everything”.

Just focus on one thing and all the pieces will fall into place.

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Got a question? The Monday Question is a weekly column. Send any questions you might have via the contact form.

Hi Andrew stumbled upon your blog through a ewen site, mind you I was researching on how credible internet marketing was and if they were scams, so I have a few questions to help me understand and hopefully make a decision

How realistic would the rabid niche cash machine work, what is really involved? lets talk about money what are the realistic figures of profits on using this product, I dont fully understand how this would work and what creates profit. How much time do I need to input to see a decent return. I would really like to know if this is a proven method and someone like me could be able to use this and eventually become financially free, its all good to say buy the product and find out, but a little more understanding and some peace about this would help me 100% to make a final decision, $30 may not look much to you but for me at this moment in my life its alot, any help and more understanding will be genuinely appreciated, thanks so much for your time and look forward to hearing from you

-Anthony

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Lots of questions have been raised and I’ll do my best to address each point.

“how credible internet marketing was” – Internet Marketing is the broad name given to what was known as “e-commerce” previously. Internet Marketing is as credible as any other broad field like “advertising” or “engineering” or “biology”…

You have the big players like Amazon, eBay, MySpace, Friendster, Google, Yahoo!, and you have the smaller Internet Marketers and Internet Marketing business/companies.

Your question can be further broken down into:

Does Internet Marketing work: It does because it’s based on the same principles as “traditional business” and the laws of economics – supply and demand, elasticity of demand, marginal utility, etc.

Is Internet Marketing a scam?: Like any other field, there are the genuine marketers and the quick buck scam artists. You need to do your due diligences.

My personal note: I’ve bought and invested in quite a bit of Internet Marketing products and services – some of it provided great value and I’ve been able to grow my business using some of the techniques, while some of it was a complete waste of time. If anything, Internet Marketing is akin to learning to walk, if you’re not already proficient in it, you’re likely to fall a number of times, skin or scratch your knees, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

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How realistic is my product, how much can you earn, what is the time involved: My intent in developing Internet Marketing products has been and remains on creating sustainable businesses.

You have a 60 day period to test the product out and see how it generates income for you.

As Internet Marketers, we provide the tools, the income potential is dependent on how fast a learner you are and how much time you put in…

If you already have some experience under your belt, it should take you a couple of days to get your site up. If you’re newer, it’ll take longer. You will have our support in resolving problems you encounter along the way.

A good niche site should generate a consistent $3,000 – $5,000 in monthly income within 3-6 months (although your results might vary).

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“$30 may not look much to you but for me at this moment in my life its alot” – Setting up a brick-and-mortar business in the real world would cost anywhere from a mid five figure sum to a couple of million dollars, and having help set up a television production studio, a software development lab and a training division for a SMB previously, the cost of setting up an online business is pitifully small.

I can understand that if you’re a student, or a work-at-home mum or dad, the finance could be fairly tight.

Some might say you could use a whole bunch of free tools and websites already available out there. Having already gone that route when I first started out, I can say that you will be saving on a couple of dollars, but you will more than pay for it with your time (and possibly have free service providers plaster your emails and websites with lots of ads).

If funds are tight, I’d suggest holding off on buying anything Internet Marketing-related now.

Focus instead on building your “Internet Marketing budget” till at least $500 before embarking on Internet Marketing. You’d need to have funds to purchase a domain name, web hosting, autoresponder service and other tools to get properly set up.

If you’re serious about building an online business, I think your time should be focused on finding or developing the best products to meet your customers needs, and closing the sales.

Rabid Niche Cash Machine will give you a piece of the puzzle and will help you get started. You will need to put in effort to make your business a success.

I’ve been at this for about 6 months and I’ve only earned about $86.73.

From the looks of things, I am gonna have to work 24-7 to make a decent living from this. What am I missing out on?

Here is a list of ebooks and blogs, forums and other sites I’ve been reading

[list of 50+ websites follows]

HELP!!!

-Angelo”

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My answer:

First off, I think you’re reading way too many websites to do anything productive. From your list, it looks like you’re trying to master AdSense, eBay auctions, ebook product creation, teleseminars, affiliate marketing, SEO and PPC.

I am not sure what your focus is on, but if you haven’t yet, you should read this post: What’s A Good Niche To Get Into?

I’d suggest you focus on just one area for now, and most Internet Marketers will likely start out as either AdSense Publishers or Affiliate Marketers.

I personally prefer affiliate marketing not just because it generally gives a better return (ie pays better) than adsense publishing (where you’re paid when a lead LEAVES your site by clicking on an external link), but it’s more in line with my personal style – I like to build personal relationships with my readers.

So lesson 1 is “be focused”.

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Although you didn’t mention it, you might not have a goal in mind.

“Making money on the Internet” is not a concrete goal.

You’d need to set a specific target and deadlines to achieve that target.

I’ve seen my fair share of new marketers who go on the big forums and say “I want to make big money on the Internet by the end of the year”. And they spend a couple of hours reading the forums, swayed by different ideas in the various discussion threads. They’re like a blade of grass swaying in the wind.

And I’m quite shocked that some of them might have drifted into adsense arbitrage or domaining a couple of weeks later, and the worst is that they’re a couple of hundred bucks in the hole with nothing to show for it.

I’d suggest setting a goal of making your first $10 on the Internet within 7 days is a good first goal.

You might end up doing directory submissions or writing articles – among the odd jobs you’d find in the “buy/sell/trade” or “help wanted” sections of most major forums or websites.

It might be small money, but I want you to understand how easily money is made on the Internet.

Once you’ve gone through this small exercise, your view changes, and possibilities open up.

Remember, Internet Marketing is not a “mental sport” where things happen just because you had an idea. You need to take action on that idea.

Write down your goals, look at your goals regularly, and focus on achieving them.

Lesson 2: Have a plan. More importantly, act on it.

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It can get quite lonely in Internet Marketing sometimes and it can take a lot of time, especially if you’re a writer and you’re trying to pick up programming skills. Or you’re a programmer and you’re struggling to put up your sales page.

If you don’t have the necessary skills, look for people who do and pay them.

There’s no shame in paying some freelancer $100 or $200 to do something that you don’t have the necessary skills to execute and which would take up 10 hours of your time (and probably ended up with a badly coded application or badly written sales letter).

If you’re really struggling to come up with the cash to pay someone, then get a small business loan, a cash advance or work at your regular day job till you build up your savings.

If on the other hand, you’re working on a major project, find partners with complimentary skills. Work out a win-win arrangement by coming up with a profit-share arrangement.

Like my friend James Brown (the Internet marketer, not the Godfather of Soul…) says “share the load and share the cash”

Lesson 3: If you don’t have the skills, outsource it. If it’s a major project, find partners and form a joint venture.

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In short, Internet Marketing should be something that’s fun, fulfiling and creates the lifestyle you desire.

If it’s creating pain, look at ways of simplifying your life and getting back on track.

Here’s this weeks question: “I’m a new Internet Marketer, which Internet Marketing product do you suggest I start promoting as an affiliate”

My answer: You should pick the area in which you have the greatest affinity.

Note that the most successful Internet Marketers will brand themself in a specific manner, with one identity, for example, you might have:

• Joel “AdSense” Comm
• Mike “Viral Marketing” Filsaime
• Chris “Super Affiliate” McNeeley
• John Carlton “The Marketing Rebel”
• Michel Fortin “The Copywriting Doctor”
• Darren “ProBlogger” Rowse
• Gary Ambrose “Viral Listbuilder”

You hardly come across someone who brands themself as a adsense/PPC/eBay/super affiliate/seo/product creator for a reason. You lose credibility because most will not believe you can master so many specializations just a couple of months into the industry.

You might have a few “Godfathers or Grand Daddies of Internet Marketing”, but they are fairly few and far between.

I don’t think any self-respecting individual will refer to themself as a “guru” either and that’s a leading indication that you should run in the opposite direction as fast as you can.

When you brand yourself, you should pick an area that you genuinely have an interest and forte for.

If you’re an ace programmer who can spit out applications coded in PHP and C# in your sleep, there’s no sense focusing on copywriting if you’re more proficient in HTML than English. It just doesn’t gel.

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As an aside, although everyone and his mother seems to be going into Internet Marketing, the Business Opportunity niche and the Make Quick Money niche, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should too. Look what happened to the Pied Piper of Hamlin’s rapt audience…

A better metric to help determine which niche you should get into is to objectively look at your affinity and your time ROI (return on investment).

If the same investment on time means you could have marketed 200 copies of a skincare product, as compared to 35 copies of an Internet Marketing product, shouldn’t you be focusing on the skincare product which would give you a higher return instead? [assuming the same level of return].

The key is to spend time sufficiently researching your niche to determine it’s popularity and propensity to spend to solve it’s problem [This goes beyond doing a keyword search and measuring KEI], and positioning yourself and branding yourself effectively in order to succeed.

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The bottomline is that 9 times out of 10, you should have a rough idea whether you have the tools at your disposal to succeed.

If you’re launching a site and don’t have sufficient confidence in your product and are unsure how well you might do, it could be a harbinger of darker times ahead.